


A Brief Note on Varys Preceding Our Current Research.

by Willowbarb



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, game of thrones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:25:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19354162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowbarb/pseuds/Willowbarb
Summary: We hope that it may be helpful to clarify the background as to why it has taken so long for scientific analysis to explain the mistaken belief that Daenerys Targaryen suffered from hereditary insanity...





	A Brief Note on Varys Preceding Our Current Research.

Varys was notable not for the blades which had made him a eunuch - such excisions were common practice when Kings and Queens wished to prevent powerful officers of the state from creating a dynasty of their own to supplant them - but because of his remarkable willingness to support, deceive, poison and betray a series of rulers, or potential rulers, whilst simultaneously claiming that his intentions were honourable and directed for the greater good of whichever realm he happened to be in at the time. Had he simply stuck to the skullduggery and left out the protestations he might have attracted less attention from those around him.

It is, I think, safe to say that there was considerable scepticism, both in those living at the time, and we historians from later years, as to whether Varys had ever cared about advancing the interests of anyone other than himself. Equally, his origin story - the claim that he had been gelded by a sorcerer to enable a ritual - had no evidence to support it beyond his own word, and few people would trust Varys‘ word beyond, say, the assertion that the sun rises in the east.

Those who unpicked the complex webs that he had woven recognised that he had earned his title of Spider, and this too had brought little respect from those who surrounded him; only the most gullible trusted his protestations that he sought only to help those less fortunate than himself. 

His summary execution, coupled with the disappearance of the body of Daenerys Targaryen immediately following her death, was deeply frustrating for those interested in precisely which poisons he had been using on her. It was common knowledge that he had become less careful about such matters in his final days, and had hoped to kill her outright by poisoning her food and drink, but this was a crude and simplistic approach, unworthy of any skilled practitioner of the darker arts. After all, it could have been averted by the employment of a food taster, or by the failure of appetite experienced by someone lost in grief. 

There was then, and is now, a measure of consensus that he had been medicating her to provoke psychotic episodes, increasing over time, in the hope that those less knowledgeable about the nature of the madness which sometimes afflicted those in the Targaryen family would assume that it had Daenerys in its grip. 

Of course, we know that when he had originally started he had simply been seeking to make her more malleable; even as a young girl being sold by her brother to Khal Drogo she had demonstrated some independence of thought, and independence of thought is not a desirable attribute in a puppet groomed to sit upon the Iron Throne. But she proved strikingly resistant to the attempts to make her fit her designated role, all the more so when she had walked into the fire with her dragon eggs and emerged with three hatched dragons who, judging from their actions, loved her, as she, judging from her actions, loved them. 

It is likely that Varys realised then that Daenerys did not share her father’s malady; her father had fantasised that he could survive walking through fire, but that was far, far beyond him. Daenerys Targaryen did not share her father’s delusions; she could walk through fire, and did. It appears that nobody had ever told her that her father, in truth, could not do so, and thus she interpreted her brother’s death, when he was ‘crowned’ with molten gold, as proof that he had not inherited the Targaryen power from their father which had enabled their distant ancestors to both tame dragons and use them to conquer Westeros.

This evidence, which will be developed in our research paper, suggests that Daenerys Targaryen inherited her power from her mother, who was, of course, her father’s sister and thus also a Targaryen; had those around her ever been honest with her about this then the course of history may well have been changed. 

It should be noted that it was very much to the advantage of those who wished to sustain the primacy of any male heir over a female heiress to hide the probability that the Targaryen power to walk through fire was heritable from mother to daughter. The evidence that has survived about her nephew, Jon Snow, suggests that he was able to ride a dragon, once that dragon had been hatched, reared and instructed by Daenerys Targaryen, but it does not extend to justify the surmise that he was able to survive the test of fire itself. 

Readers will thus understand why the recent discovery of mitochondrial genetics has radically changed the perspective of researchers looking at what is now ancient history. Our next papers will begin to question the extent to which we have failed to understand such an important part of our history.


End file.
